Poetry is a way of life and a shortcut to the sublime... An avid reader of poetry since my Polish childhood,
I started writing in English. The flexibility, richness and focus of this language
never cease to amaze me!

Since 1995, I have kept a personal poetic journal and gave all
sorts of poems to my friends. I like illustrating them with my photographs, taken mostly in my garden and
neighborhood of
Southern California (see my poetry page). In 2006, I decided to share my work and at public readings and in publications.

Many of my poems have been inspired by art and presented at art exhibitions in Southern
California, including the Pacific Asia Museum and private galleries. In addition to these "captions to paintings," I write
portraits of people I meet, stories from my life, memories from my childhood and imaginary romances.

Why do I write? Because I do not have to! Poetry is freedom. My favorite poets (in random order) include Rainer Maria Rilke, Artur Rimbaud,
Czeslaw Milosz, e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot, and Emily Dickinson. In 2010-2012 I served as the Sixth
Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga. I publish three blogs on poetry and music:

A collection of 60 poems organized around appearances of six angels:
Amor, Eros, Eloe, Thanatos, Ellenai, and Sophia. The poems are intertwined with interludes of memory, nostalgia, and nature mysticism. The book
is illustrated with photos of landscapes and gardens of Southern California.

Inspired by the Songs of Songs and centuries of love poems, from Sappho and Dante to Milosz and ballads sung by Ella Fitzgerald and Patsy Cline, this volume presents
156 love poems written over a ten year period. Illustrated with 87 rose photographs
and organized in seven sections that portray the ups and downs of a unique love story, Rose Always replaces all previous versions of this book (published in 2008, revised in 2011), finally limited to what matters the most: Love.

Published in 2008, revised and expanded in 2017 in a new illustrated color paperback edition, 194 pp.
ISBN 9781945938177.

This volume celebrates the 200th birth anniversary of a Polish pianist-composer, Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)
in a selection of 123 poems by 92 contemporary poets, mostly based in America. The hightlights include the first
English translation of Norwid's Fortepian Szopena by Leonard Kress, and classic poems by Emma
Lazarus, Amy Lowell and T.S. Eliot.

Review by Christopher Woods in Contemporary World Literature 5 (February 2011):
"For those who have been moved by the music of Fryderyk Chopin, this new international anthology will be a treat... One breathtaking aspect of the anthology is the diversity of voices, both stylistically and geographically... [Among] the striking aspects of the anthology is the way in which the editor, Polish born Maja Trochimczyk, arranges the various sections, not only by musical forms, but also into sections like beauty and death, words that often come to mind when considering Chopin's life, his passions and his early demise."

MUSIC HISTORY

As an author of seven books and over 70 scholarly
articles and chapters published in peer-reviewed journals and books, I'm well established in the music history world, with two main specializations: Polish music of the 19th and 20th centuries, and
20th-century contemporary music (Andriessen, Brant, Lutoslawski, and others). Two of my three graduate degrees are in music history: Ph.D. from McGill University (1994) and M.A. from the University of Warsaw (1986).
I also studied sound engineering (M.A. 1987) and used this background in my musical research. A former director of USC Polish Music Center, I am a member of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences, American Musicological Society,
Polish American Historical Association, and other professional organizations.

Frederic Chopin: A Research and Information Guide, co-authored with William Smialek; second, revised and expanded
edition (New York: Routledge, June 2015). ISBN 978-0-415-99884-0 This annotated bibliography
concerns both the nature of primary sources related to the composer and the secondary sources which deal with him, his compositions,
and his influence as a composer. The second edition includes research published since the first edition and provides electronic resources.

Polish Dance in Southern California. East European Monographs Series, Columbia University Press, 2007.
A study of folk dance groups created by émigré amateurs and the influence of folk-song-and-dance
ensembles from Poland on the Polish dance movement in America. Based on a 1999 research project
of the Southern California Studies Center at USC. Review (Nov 2008): Journal of Folklore Research.

A Romantic Century in Polish Music. Collection of essays by Magdalena Dziadek, Martina Homma, Krzysztof Rottermund, Krzysztof Szatrawski, Maria Zduniak, and the editor. Essays about Lipinski in Wroclaw, Lipinski's violins, Wieniawski's virtuosity, the reception of Wagner, women composers, and other issues.
Los Angeles: Moonrise Press, December 2009. See the description
with the table of contents. ISBN 978-0-9819693-3-6 (paperback).

Henry Brant
On His Music: Interviews. Collection of conversations with the composer, 1992-2004. With essays about his music; list of works, calendarium of life, index, and a CD recording.
Moonrise Press, forthcoming in 2012.

Hanna Kulenty's Musical Kitchen. Collection of
interviews with the composer; essays about her music, her M.A. thesis in English translation; with a list of works, discography, recipes and index. Moonrise Press, forthcoming in 2009.

With a simple digital camera I take pictures of what I like to see in my neighborhood
in California. Examples of my photography of landscapes, and plants of Southern California are on the margin of this page.
Online journal, Poetic Diversity made me the Artist in Residence in their August 2009 issue. Photographs of roses
appeared in the Epiphany Magazine, No. 16, October 2012, in
The Houston Literary Review, June 2009
visual arts issue, and in
The Clockwise Cat - 2015 Femmewise issue.
I participated in
three group art shows: at the Scenic Drive Gallery in 2011 (Poets-Artists, curated by Susan Dobay), Colburn School of Music (curated by
Andrew Kolodziey), in 2013, and River Rock Arts Colony at the Back Door Gallery, Sunland in 2016 (curated by Debby Beck).
My first solo photography exhibition, "Shadows, Leaves, Roses," was held in September 2013 at the Scenic Drive Gallery in Monrovia and the second, "Rose of Roses" was held for three months in February - April 2016 at the Backdoor Bakery in Sunland.

I use my photos as illustrations and covers in poetry books,
Rose AlwaysMiriam's Iris,
Meditations on Divine Names
and other books published by Moonrise Press. Nature photography also livens up my online chapbooks. My news photography of charity
and music events appeared in periodicals in the U.S. and Poland.

I have curated two exhibitions, Polish Music Manuscripts (October 2000) and Paderewski: A Portrait of a Musician (2002-2003) at USC Thornton
School of Music, both with vintage photographs and manuscripts from my collection.